


The Christmas Pudding Caper

by LadyReisling



Category: Finishing School - Gail Carriger
Genre: Boarding School, Enemies to Friends, Gen, Holidays, christmas pudding, experiments gone wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 02:57:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13045068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyReisling/pseuds/LadyReisling
Summary: Monique has her last chance to Finish at the Headmistress' Christmas tea. If she doesn't, the school itself might be Finished. But she needs a little help from an unexpected source.





	The Christmas Pudding Caper

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AuroraCloud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraCloud/gifts).



Sophronia had long since learned to expect the unexpected at Mademoiselle Geraldine’s, but this far exceeded every other unexpected event she had ever experienced. She’d ended up in the tassel section of the airship while heading back from a routine coal-gathering visit to the engine room, and ducked into a handy storage closet to avoid an unexpected maid mechanical. As far as she knew, she’d just stumbled upon the world’s first indoor snowstorm. Soft, white powder covered the broken mechanicals and assorted other bits and bobs in the closet, melting into puddles on the floor, and the air temperature was chilly through her thin dress.

Coming closer to the  clanking machinery that powered the blizzard, Sophronia could see that, though it worked, the device had a few design flaws. Some India rubber would muffle the noise, and (though Vieve would know better than she about machinery) it seemed to her that the steam that powered the machine was generating too much heat, melting most of the snow before it fell.

Although she had no idea what a snow machine was doing on board the school in the first place, Sophronia could see the merits of such a device. In its current form, made a little less noisy and producing a bit more snow, it could become the very latest fashion in holiday party decorations. Miniaturized and made a bit more powerful, a timely, easily-controlled indoor blizzard could make a fantastic diversion. She needed to bring Vieve back to investigate further, but for now, the maid mechanical has gone and Sophronia was dangerously close to being missed from Sister Mattie’s lesson for lack of time to dress. After checking again that the coast was clear, she hurried back to her room to change.

Later that night, she brought Vieve to the storage closet. The machine still clanked along, spitting snowflakes and fine mist over the contents of the room.

“Well of course I know about the Snow Queen,” Vieve informed her. “You could have told me about it down in the boiler room and saved us a trip to the tassel section.”

“Maybe,” Sophronia replied. “But then you wouldn’t have had a chance to test your improvements to the Obstructor, would you?” 

“I suppose that’s true,” the younger girl allowed.

“It works beautifully for the early stages, by the way,” Sophronia praised. “But what’s the point of the… Snow Queen, you called it?”

“It’s just something I’ve been mucking about with. I thought we could use it for a bit of fun and maybe experiment with making wet coal burn more easily, but the heat from the steam is giving me some trouble.” She looked put out, and no wonder. Vieve was used to machinery bending to her will.

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Sophronia consoled her.

They were so absorbed in their conversation that a sudden noise in the corridor startled them both. They froze and lapsed into silence, waiting for the footsteps to pass them by, but instead they paused outside the very closet in which Sophronia, Vieve, and the loudly-clanking Snow Queen were lurking.

“Scatter!” Sophronia hissed, praying it wasn’t Professor Braithwope with his vampire-acute hearing. Vieve didn’t need telling twice. They dove for cover in the deep shadows created by a snow-covered, broken footman mechanical.

Crouched in the shadows, hearts pounding, they waited. The closet door creaked open and another shadow slipped in, silhouetted against a triangle of gaslight that shrank to darkness as the door closed. 

Sophronia did her best to breathe silently, knowing by experience that holding her breath might cause her to blow her cover with an audible gasp later. But she relaxed slightly, then more as she realized that not only was the shadow too small to belong to Professor Braithwope or any of the other teachers, it was headed into a different corner, back turned to Sophronia and Vieve in their hiding place. She stayed hidden as the figure stepped into a puddle of melted snow and condensation left by the Snow Queen and Monique de Pelouse swore loudly. 

 _Most unladylike_ , Sophronia thought, but that was hardly the point. What in the aether was Monique doing in the tassel section at this hour? 

As they watched, Monique rummaged through a pile of wet, broken machinery and pulled out a bundle. Upon examination of the bundle, she loosed a scream of rage that set an alarm blaring in the corridor. With another loud curse, she dropped her bundle and bolted.

Beside Sophronia, Vieve sighed with relief. “That was close! Better stay put until the all clear now.”

“Too right,” Sophronia agreed. _No wonder Monique had failed to Finish._ Her stealth techniques really needed work _._ Sophronia recalled that lesson: _Screaming, if it must be done at all, should be limited to tiny shrieks of terror, usually followed by a faint to cause a diversion._ And a lady never cursed, especially in such vulgar terms as Monique had used. It was enough to make the lowest of the lowborn blush.

Finally, the alarm ceased and the corridor fell silent. After another moment, Sophronia crawled from her hiding place and made her way to where Monique had been. 

“Don’t you think you’ve tempted fate enough for one night?” Vieve asked.

“Have you gone soft? I just want to see what Monique was after.” She leaned over and picked up a bundle of papers, bundled securely with a green ribbon. The paper was waterlogged, the ink smeared and impossible to read. “What’s this when it’s at home?”

Vieve came over, holding up a tiny, steam powered candle for light. “Impossible to tell. Could be anything. If you dry it out right, you might be able to see a bit, but...a journal, maybe? Doesn’t look like a schematic.”

Carefully, Sophronia tied the waterlogged paper into a scroll, using the ribbon to secure it. “We’ll look at this again in the daylight.” She fed it cautiously into Bumbersnoot the reticule. “Don’t eat that, please,” she told him. Tick-tock, went his mechanical tail, as if he understood, and she patted his head. 

“Better scatter, Sophronia,” Vieve advised. “Sun’s coming up. Bed check soon.”

Back in her room, Sophronia opened Bumbersnoot’s storage compartment and removed the pages (only a little singed, she noted with satisfaction) and carefully laid them under her bed to dry. She slipped under the covers and rolled onto her side, facing away from the door, just as Lady Linette came to check beds. Her last thought before she drifted to sleep was that her hands smelled curiously of Christmas pudding. 

Next day, the school was abuzz with plans for the Headmistress’ Christmas tea. The school would dock in Swiffle-on-Exe on Christmas Eve, just over a week from now, and the party was to be a grand affair, attended by dignitaries of all stripes. It was to be the final examination for all the girls, convincing all the dignitaries that the students were nothing more than normal young ladies and surely _not_ intelligence agents in training. The highlight was to be a giant flaming Christmas pudding made from the headmistress’ family recipe. In the runup, dancing lessons had taken on an uncharacteristic urgency, while Household Management and Poisons classes focused on the curative and lethal properties of mistletoe and holly. The girls gossiped eagerly about who would be in attendance and what they would wear.

At teatime, Lady Linette stood to address the school. “Ladies, it has come to my attention that the headmistress’ secret family recipe for Christmas pudding has gone missing. It simply _must_ be found. The Christmas tea cannot go on without it.”

“Mademoiselle Geraldine misplaced her cookery book?” Dimity asked. “Sounds like a test to me.”

Sophronia nodded. “Probably Sister Mattie will teach us how to make a Christmas pudding to replace it--maybe one with amnesiac properties so that the guests forget if they’ve seen anything unusual. I’ve read that if you mix mugwort and lavender with foxglove, it makes a compound to induce forgetfulness. That could be useful knowledge for the field.”

“Yes, but it would take a lot of skill,” Agatha put in. “Too much lavender, and it would be like drinking a bottle of scent. Too much foxglove, and everyone ends up dead. But the mugwort--pain relief and a sense of well-being--is genius. You’d just have to hide it in something to make the taste unnoticeable, and Christmas pudding would be the perfect thing.”

Sophronia nodded, both with agreement and approval. Agatha had been working hard to bring her marks up in Household Poisons, and it showed. Further down the table, Moni que and Preshea whispered furiously between themselves. Monique’s dour face had gone curiously pale, and once the meal was over, she dashed off by herself. Sophronia didn’t see the other girl again until their afternoon dancing lesson, by which time she looked very strange, a cross between sick, afraid, and like she’d just tasted something unpleasant. During quadrille practice, she intentionally stepped on Sophronia’s foot.

“Really, Miss Pelouse,” the headmistress tutted. “Ladies must be _graceful_. Switch parts with Miss Temminnick, please, and try to do as she does.”

Monique looked mutinous.

Sophronia stayed in her room that night, poring over the pages she’d nicked from the closet, but between the water damage and the singe marks, she couldn’t make sense of them. Numbers and letters blurred into an unreadable mess. Sighing, she settled under her covers to contemplate. Monique had hidden the papers. They were wrapped in green ribbon, and Monique was a known associate of the Picklemen. Probably she was planning some assault on the school, working for the Picklemen. Probably it would jeopardize all of them, and most likely it was connected to the headmistress’ Christmas tea. Hopefully, she couldn’t pull off whatever her dastardly plan was without the ruined journal, but that wouldn’t stop her from trying.

“It just doesn’t make any _sense_ ,” she told Vieve when the two next met. She’d spread the papers out around her on the floor of the closet, in a corner away from where Vieve was tinkering with the Snow Queen. “What would the Picklemen want at the headmistress’ Christmas tea?”

“Lots of important people are going to be there,” Vieve said. “I heard my aunt talking to Captain Niall about it the other day.”

“So they could be plotting anything,” Sophronia said. “Embarrass the school, expose the intelligence community, maybe even assassinate the Queen. Exposing all of our identities and what really goes on here could cripple Her Majesty’s Intelligence Service for years to come. And Monique’s right in the middle of it.”

“Oh, Sophronia, why must you always assume the worst of me?”

Sophronia felt her face flame. She and Vieve had been so deep in their conversation, they hadn’t heard Monique approaching, much less entering their closet.

She composed herself at record speed. “What are you doing here?” 

“Making assumptions will get you killed in the field. You aren’t the only one who sneaks around the school at night, you know. But at least I don’t consort with riffraff,” Monique sniffed, looking down her nose at them. “More importantly, I’m going to Finish this time, and you aren’t going to spoil it. Give. It. Back.”

“Exactly what are you on about? The reason you haven’t Finished is your own stupidity, not my doing. And give back what?”

“The cookery book. Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Christmas pudding receipt. I hid it here a week ago, and I _know_ you were here that night.”

“It’s a cookery book?” Sophronia asked, incredulous. 

“Yes. Lady Linette said that if I could keep the receipt hidden until the day before the Christmas tea, I’d be Finished. I’m not letting you and your stupid mechanimal and your riffraff friend ruin it this time. Give it back.”

Sophronia looked over the papers spread around her, considering. They didn’t look much like a cookery book, but with the water stains and the blurring ink, it was impossible to tell. Even if Monique was passing information to the Picklemen, they would be hard-pressed to read it. And though Monique had spent too much time terrorizing her for her to ever help the other girl willingly, if she ever actually Finished, she’d be out of Sophronia’s way for good.

“If it’s just a cookery book, why is it bound in Picklemen green?”

“Because it’s Mademoiselle Geraldine’s personal cookery book. She doesn’t know anything about the Picklemen.”

“Have you ever considered that maybe you _shouldn’t_ Finish? You did a terrible job with the prototype. And hiding paper in a wet closet, I mean to say.”

Monique’s furious expression softened and crumpled, and for some reason, Sophronia felt sorry for her. She gathered the papers on the floor and offered them to Monique, but when Monique saw them up close, she burst into tears. “It’s ruined!”

“It’s Finishing extra credit. Write your own pudding recipe, and pass it off as Mademoiselle Geraldine’s.”

“But I don’t know how to make a Christmas pudding!”

“Find someone to teach you,then!”

But it didn’t look like Monique knew anyone to teach her to make Christmas pudding. For days, Sophronia and her friends watched the other girl struggle alone in the drawing room, mumbling about currants and figs. She sneaked a few ingredients from the larder, mixing them with varying success, cooking over a spirit lamp that Vieve had invented and Sophronia had donated to the cause...all in the name of getting the other girl Finished and out of the way, of course. A few of the puddings were edible, some were not, but without fail, when they were soaked in brandy and lit on fire, the puddings would explode.

Sophronia, Dimity, and Agatha discussed the situation a week later over tea. The headmistress’ party was only two days away, and not only had the recipe not been found, Monique was no closer to perfecting her own recipe. The night before, she’d ruined three silk handkerchiefs with exploding brandy.

“I don’t know why we should help,” Dimity said. “And I don’t know how to make a Christmas pudding.”

“I thought the same,” Sophronia told her. “But think: If Monique Finishes, we never have to see her again. And if she doesn’t Finish, not only are we stuck with her, the Christmas tea will be a disaster.”

“Well, when you put it that way…” Agatha sighed, “I’d hate not to have a chance to wear the new Christmas frock my mother sent. I’m not going alone, though.”

Together, the three of them rose and went over to Monique and Preshea’s table, where Monique was scribbling recipe notes in desperation. “It’s no use,” she whimpered. “The Christmas tea is two days away. Even if I get the recipe ready, who knows if it will taste like Mademoiselle Geraldine’s?” 

“But what if you could just trick people into thinking they were eating Mademoiselle Geraldine’s pudding?” Agatha asked. 

“How?”

“Secret ingredients. I’ve almost perfected the mugwort potion. I need a test subject, you need to Finish. Sounds like a good combination to me.”

“And if secret ingredients aren’t enough,” Sophronia added, “Vieve and I have a little something up our sleeves.” The Snow Queen was nearly finished, and so were the wet-start fireworks that Vieve had been working on in her spare time. The fireworks would provide whatever distraction needed, and combined with Agatha’s potion, she was certain that the pudding could be passed off without any trouble.

They did a dry run the following night. Monique had indeed come close to replicating the taste of Christmas pudding, and Agatha’s mugwort concoction had all the girls relaxing and giggling around the drawing room like old friends. Maybe, Sophronia reflected, Monique wasn’t so bad after all. The mugwort was doing its work, the pudding was delicious, and wet-start fireworks sent sparkling stars around the room, dazzling them all. 

On Christmas Eve morning, the school docked at Swiffle-on-Exe and Sophronia and Vieve sneaked the miniaturized, fully-powered Snow Queen into the Great Hall of Bunson’s. By the time the girls descended to the school dressed in their finery for the headmistress’ tea party, the Great Hall sparkled with a dusting of dry, warm snow. Another version of the Snow Queen could be fitted into a girl’s reticule to create a perfect diversion.

“Do you think it will work?” Monique asked, breathless. She had submitted her finished recipe to Lady Linette the evening before, although the pudding experiment had never come through the flaming stage without ending up in pieces and splattered on walls.

“It has to work, or the school is ruined,” Sophronia told her. In moments, the giant flaming Christmas pudding would be wheeled in in all its glory. She prayed that their little experiment would work, and for once, found that she really did want Monique to Finish. She thought the other girl might even make a fine asset in the field someday. 

At that moment, the doors to the Great Hall opened and the pudding was wheeled in. Right on cue, it was lit, and as the flames flickered, Monique’s face glowed even brighter. And when the death of the flames brought the golden sparks of Vieve’s new signature wet-start fireworks, the whole room cheered.

“Miss Pelouse, I pronounce you Finished,” Lady Linette said that night at a special assembly of the school just before the girls went home to their waiting families. As Monique made her final curtsey, she smiled shyly at Sophronia. They might never be best friends, but together, they’d take the intelligence community by storm.

**Author's Note:**

> AuroraCloud, I so enjoyed writing your prompt! Happy Yuletide and thanks for reading!


End file.
